Sergeant Erwin & the Blazing Bomb

A story of a night when the Congressional Medal of Honor seemed a modest award
by: Corey Ford

If I hadn't read Sarah Palin: America by Heart, I never would've known of this story. Please share this with anyone you wish. Men such as these need to be remembered. This is the true embodiment of Some gave all. God bless all our Veterans; not just today, or Memorial Day, or Veterans Day, but everyday.

Sometimes I'm asked which I like best of all the pieces I've written. I guess the answer is something I wrote one night back in 1945, on the island of Guam. It was never published; I didn't even sign it; but it was more rewarding than anything else I've ever done.

Guam was our base in the Marianas from which the B-29's took off for their nightly incendiary raids on Japan. As an Air Force colonel, I had flown with them, and I knew what those missions were like. The seven endless hours over the Pacific to the hostile coastline. The wink of ack-ack guns and the flack bursts all around us, the ground searchlights that lighted up our cabin as though an auto had parked beside us in the sky, and, after our bomb run, the red ruin of an enemy city burning. We would throttle down to cruising speed; there were 1500 miles of empty ocean between us and home.

This particular night I was not flying. I sat in the Group headquarters tent with Col. Carl Storrie, waiting for the mission's strike report. Storrie, a lean tough Texan, was the Group Commander, and he paced up and down the tent, restless as a caged animal, as the fist news filtered in. The lead plane, commanded by Capt. Tony Simeral, had been forced to turn away from the target, and had to make an emergency landing at Iwo Jima. It was on it's way back to Guam now.

We could make out the drone of it's engines, see the red flares that signaled distress, and hear the fire trucks rumbling out to meet it as it touched down. A few moments later Captain Simeral entered the tent. His face was white; he seemed to be in a state of shock. He fumbled for a cigarette with his left hand, and I saw that the back of his right hand was pockmarked with deep ugly holes that had burned clear to the bone. He took several drags before he could trust himself to talk.

It had happened as they approached the enemy coast, he said. They were flying the pathfinder plane, which drops a phosphorus smoke bomb to assemble the formation before proceeding to target. On a B-29 this task is performed by the radio operator, back in the waist of the plane. At a signal from the pilot, he releases the bomb through a narrow tube.

The radio operator on Simeral's plane was a chunky, red-haired youngster from Alabama, Staff Sgt. Henry Erwin. His crewmates liked to mimic his soft southern drawl, and he was always with a grin, always quiet and courteous. He received the routine order from Simeral, triggered the bomb, and dropped it down the tube.

There was a malfunction. The bomb exploded in the tube and bounced back into Erwin's face, blinding both eyes and searing off an ear.

Phosphorus burns with a furious intensity that melts metal like butter. Now the bomb at Erwin's feet was eating it's way rapidly through the deck of the plane, toward the full load of incendiaries in their racks below. He was alone; the navigator had gone up to the astrodome to get a star shot. There was no time to think. He picked up the white-hot bomb in his bare hands, and started forward to the cockpit, groping his way with elbows and feet.

The navigators folding table was down and latched, blocking the narrow passageway. Erwin hugged the blazing bomb under an arm, feeling it devour the flesh on his ribs, unfastened the spring latch and lifted the table. (We inspected the plane later; the skin of his entire hand was seared onto the table.)

He stumbled on, a walking torch. His clothes, hair, and flesh were ablaze.

The dense smoke had filled the airplane, and Simeral had opened the window beside him to clear the air. "I couldn't see Erwin," he told us, "but I heard his voice right at my elbow. He said --" Simeral paused a moment to steady his own voice. "He said, 'Pardon me, sir,' and reached across to the window and tossed out the bomb. Then he collapsed on the flight deck." A fire extinguisher was turned on him, but the phosphorus still burned.

Simeral's instrument panel was obliterated by the smoke, and the plane was out of control. It was less than 300 feet off of the water when he righted it. He called to the formation that he was aborting, jettisoned his bombs and headed back to the field hospital at Iwo, three hours away. The crew applied first aid to Erwin, gave him plasma, smeared grease on his smoldering flesh. "He never lost consciousness, but he spoke only once the whole way back. He asked me --" Simeral took another drag on his cigarette. " 'Is everybody else all right, sir?' "

At Iwo, he was still exhaling phosphorus smoke from his lungs, and his body had become so rigid that he had to be eased out through the window like a log. They carried him to the hospital. When they removed the unguent pads there and exposed his flesh to air, it began to smolder again. The airplane flew on to Guam -- with 11 men who would not be living save for the one they left behind.

Simeral finished talking. A young lieutenant looked at the holes in his right hand, where the phosphorus had splattered, and said tactlessly, "You ought to put in for a Purple Heart, Captain." Simeral, his control snapping, took a wild swing at him. Then the flight surgeon arrived and gave him a sedative, and led him away to have his burns treated.

We spent the rest of the night writing up a recommendation for the Congressional Medal of Honor. It was simply worded. There was no need to speak of heroism and sacrifice; the facts were enough. It ended with the conventional military phrase: "Above and beyond the call of duty," but that seemed to express it pretty well. At five in the morning Colonel Storrie carried the single typewritten page to Air Force headquarters. General Curtis LeMay was awakened. He read and signed it and the recommendation was flashed to Washington. The reply arrived in record time: Approved.

Iwo reported that Sergeant Erwin was still alive, but no one could say how much longer he would survive. There was no Congressional Medal of Honor on Guam; the nearest was in Honolulu, and a special B-29 was dispatched to fly the Pacific to Hawaii.

The medal was in a locked display case in Gen. Robert C. Richardson's headquarters, and the key was missing. They smashed the glass, took the medal from the case and sped back to Guam. General LeMay flew to Iwo and personally presented it to Sergeant Erwin, in a ceremony at his bedside. He repeated the final line about the call of duty, and Erwin said, "Thank you, sir."

Several years after the war I heard that Erwin was back in Alabama, happily married; he had regained the use of his hands and partial vision in one eye. I hope he can read over his citation now and then. I hope it gives him as much satisfaction as it gave me to write it.

That is a very moving story and one I've never heard before. As an Alabamian, I would've thought our media would have been all over it. They feature WWII vet stories rather frequently - but I've never heard that one.

@geds, I couldn't find this story online anywhere, save the original page images from readers digest in the archives of the University of Alabama. I was looking for some things to post for Memorial Day, and I remembered this story from listening to Gov. Palin's book. It hasn't mattered how many times I've replayed that book, the passage of this story has been moving. I wanted to share it online, and was surprised to be unable to find it anywhere, so I retyped it from those original page images. It needs to be read and seen, heard by all. It is so important that what has been spent to keep this country free never be forgotten. Please pass it along to one and all.

Good evening folks. Sorry for my absence… I seldom get on the web, do much of my posting to FB & tweeting via my mobile and the forum does not lend itself well to mobile viewing. Hope all are well. Wanted to bring this thread once again to the fore for Memorial Day. God Bless.

In this day when the kids are looking to NFL players and basketball players as their heroes, it's embarrasing to think that many of these "heroes" have police rap sheets as long as their arms. Then there are the real heroes like this young man. Why don't we recognize these guys as the heroes they truly are? Whether WWII, Vietnam, or Iraq, we need to honor them.

We were watching the movie "To Hell and Back" starring Audie Murphy today. There was another true hero. Too bad our kids and grandkids don't have these kinds of guys to admire today.

In this day when the kids are looking to NFL players and basketball players as their heroes, it's embarrasing to think that many of these "heroes" have police rap sheets as long as their arms. Then there are the real heroes like this young man. Why don't we recognize these guys as the heroes they truly are? Whether WWII, Vietnam, or Iraq, we need to honor them.

We were watching the movie "To Hell and Back" starring Audie Murphy today. There was another true hero. Too bad our kids and grandkids don't have these kinds of guys to admire today.
Thanks are due them today.